EPISODE 535: YA BEEN GINSBURND
Also, Holly Blair has exploded into glitter and bats.
POP CULTURE SPIRIT WOW
So here’s a thing I’ve been wondering.
Do haircuts matter?
Okay, yes, I recently gave myself a bad haircut. And yes, it was the third in what seems to be now an ongoing series rather than a Ryan Murphy 8 episodes-and-out project.
Also yes, in terms of business contacts my life is pretty much Epic Hermit Level Unlocked at this point.
But does any of it really matter though? I realize 2020 is not exactly the Met Gala of years. More like the Mets Game of years, amirite?*
But even if it were the Met Gala, who cares?
This has been a somewhat regular realization the last six months. That thing that I worried about or invest lots of energy into? *shrug*
As a priest I think it’s an interesting challenge for the Church going forward. I don’t know about anyone else, but I find if the powers that be aren’t talking about stuff that matters – life and death, health care workers, teachers, the poor, refugees, climate, race, human rights, the human community – all I hear is Charlie Brown’s teacher.
You want to tell people they have to go back to Church right now or else?** Or that the Attorney General is actually kind of a great Catholic? Cool cool cool. Have fun with that. I’ve got a date with Helen Mirren tonight (Prime Suspect series finale!), and a pretty busy calendar these next six weeks praying that the elections go okay. But I wish you well.
Meanwhile I continue to read pieces about Ruth Bader Ginsberg.
Here’s one from Anne Helen Petersen:
She has become a celebrity in old age, a signifier of the resiliency and endurance of progressive ideals, a feminist of the old school who has become a hero to next generation: The Notorious RBG who takes zero shit and demands that moral arc of the universe continue its bend towards justice.
That last line…
There’s also this great article about her love of opera.
Her life was about understanding people’s stories, and that’s what we do. When you look at her great decisions — like the father who was trying to get child care support because he was a widower, and at that point you could only get the support if you were a widow — those kinds of cases she made her career of are the stuff of opera. The underdog, the ill-served character: Manon Lescaut, Violetta, women who have to struggle their way to the top for survival. They connected to her sense of right and wrong and what is a humane way of living.
And Vulture of course also collected all of SNL’s fantastic Ginsberg sketches. If you’ve never seen them, you must. ***
Here’s her at the RNC in the Before Times.
Speaking about the Before Times, The Great British Bake-Off started again this week (on Netflix). If you happened to visit my Mass today you know this as I couldn’t stop talking about it. It was filmed in the pandemic, which for a baking show in which the contestants work side by side in a big closed tent should have been impossible. But they made the decision to have everyone live together for the entirety of the shoot – contestants, crew, hosts. And as a result, the series actually looks and feels very much like it always has.
What an unexpectedly beautiful experience that is, to see a world where there are no masks and where people are not afraid of being around each other. I’m sure some of it is nostalgia, but I experienced it more as relief. Human contact is still possible! There is a Beyond All This!
In the States some shows have begun filming. Backstage some of them seem to be kind of a disaster. For me the fascinating thing is the anxiety I feel at the idea of watching them. Any good story depends upon the audience giving itself over to it; but barring the kind of measures GBBO has undertaken I wonder if it will be possible to watch a show and not be worried about the safety of those involved, or not notice the fact that no one ever stands near each other, looks at each other or touches.
(There’s another British show on right now, Mortimer and Whitehouse: Gone Fishing, which you can find here. It’s a perfect show for the current moment, two older British comedians sitting around fishing and talking about mortality. I love it so much.
The latter half of their current season was done post-pandemic. Eventually they must have gone into some kind of GBBO-type quarantine bubble, but in its first post-pandemic episode (the fourth in the season) the two men have clearly been told to keep apart, and it is all pretty deeply unsettling.)
There’s so much good stuff that I haven’t seen. Also good stuff that I have seen but not in a while. (I’ve begun rewatching Fringe, which was like The X-Files meets a thing I can’t tell you without ruining the show but it is amazing, and I can’t believe how great it is right from the start.) I want shows to be up and running so my friends can all keep working.
But I don’t find myself wondering when all my favorite shows will be back.
How about you?
One other amazing pop culture thing happened to me last week. Writing about it involves spoilers, so if you are a video game person and have not played The Last of Us Part II but plan to, skip this section.
If you’re not into video games at all, you might also think you should skip this section. Give me a second. Really I’m writing this for you.
The Last of Us is a post-apocalyptic zombie series – I can feel you wanting to turn away non-gamers, hang in there– centered around Joel, a loner who has to protect a young girl, Ellie, who turns out to be key to a cure. In the first game they travel across the country to scientists who they believe will be able to use her DNA to create a vaccine.
But then, in the game’s final brutal twist, Joel discovers the creating the vaccine will kill Ellie. And rather than let the scientists do that he kills them and escapes with her..
In Part II, which just came out, Abby, the daughter of the main scientist who Joel killed hunts him down and beats him to death in front of Ellie. And the game is then Ellie traveling to where Abby is from, and executing everyone who came with her to kill Joel.
Yes it is brutal, and at times very very uncomfortable. Whenever Ellie gets in a firefight with humans, they respond to her killing their friends by calling out their names, filled with grief. You know, just like normal people would.
And when Ellie finally meets Abby, rather than have the fight we’ve been waiting for, the game suddenly stops and forces us to play Abby through the same three days we’ve just played with Ellie. Which is nearly impossible at first. Given what she did to Joel you absolutely don’t want to have anything to do with her. In fact at first I refused to give her skill upgrades. I did not want her to have anything she could eventually use against Ellie. She was the Bad Guy.
But this isn’t some stunt; you end up playing Abby for a long time in order to get back to Ellie. And where Ellie’s story is about revenge, Abby’s ends up being a lot about rescuing these two kids who are running from a cult. Which is a storyline I can absolutely get behind. And so slowly, slowly, slowly you begin to embrace Abby as a hero in her own right.
In fact the Abby story goes on so long that when we get back to Ellie and her quest to kill Abby, it’s physically sickening. And the game is relentless. In order to finish you actually have to try and kill Abby. It’s awful, and also genius.
You wanted to hunt her down? Well, here you go, you monster.
I can’t think of a story more relevant to this moment in time. I wish everyone would play it.
THREE TWEETS
It was the 21st of September y’all
(If you have no idea what this is or why it’s here, I am excited for you to read this story.)
Sometimes I feel like this (for some reason you have to click on the tweet to see the image):
And other times…
The comments are equally relatable.
So the first debate is Tuesday. Honestly, I can’t see the point in watching. Sure, I’d like to see Joe Biden answer every question with “$750". But I already know what I think about this election, and any minute spent listening to crazy is a moment spent indulging crazy.
As my grandmother used to say when we asked her to turn off cable news for a while, “Hard Pass.”
Make choices that feed your spirits. May your life explode into glitter and bats. (And make sure you’re registered to vote.) *****
See you next week.
*I feel bad about this joke. The White Sox are clearly the Mets of Chicago and I am theirs and they are mine, so apologies. I was grasping at alliterations.
** What exactly is the “else” at this point? Have you wondered about this? In another era it’d be Hell, our old chestnut. But that dog don’t hunt these days, or not much anyway. It’s more like, “Or else I will say it again because money.”
*** As I soon as I wrote this I had to stop and rewatch some of the sketches. And here’s the thing: most SNL political impressions draw from actual aspects of those people--their mannerisms and statements, or their personalities (think Alec Baldwin’s Trump, Jason Sudeikis’ Biden, Maya Rudolph’s Kamala Harris). The comedy is in extending from what we know (or in recent years just in repeating what we’ve seen).
But McKinnon’s Ginsberg is a complete fiction. She break dances, she dirty dances (a lot), she throws tons of shade. (She also cleans herself like a fly and is obsessed with Riverdale’s Cole Sprouse.) And yet it still works. Partially it’s precisely because it’s so out of character and silly.
But I think McKinnon’s RBG is also a sort of wish-fulfillment figure. She’s who we want Ginsberg to be in light of the world around us and around her, someone totally undaunted by it all. Be as awful as you want, you will not pull her down.
**** Also I wish everyone would give to the campaign to defeat Mitch McConnell. Have I mentioned that?
***** If you don’t know whether you will vote and you’re up for a conversation, hit me up.